HermannOberth

Born on 5 June 1894 at Sibiu, Hermann Oberth is the father of aeronautics and technical precursor of a new technological era.

Enthusiast since childhood about Jules Verne's books, especially "From the Earth to the Moon" and "Journey around the Moon", the future scientist realised his first model rocket at the age of 15, and at later he did a series of calculations for a multistage rocket.

Later, his work would be so revolutionary, that it was regarded with great apprehension by scientists and publishers. His paper, "Rocket to interplanetary space", was refused for publication in Germany, because it contained among other things "too much Math for a Physics paper and too much Physics for a mathematical book". But it was accepted by Professor Augustin Maior in 1922 at the University of Cluj in Romania, as dissertation for the award of Mathematics and Physics professor title.

A few years later, in 1929, the main work of Hermann Oberth was published, entitled "Ways of interplanetary flight", also called "the Bible of astronautics science", work which received then the International Award for interplanetary flight science.

While he served as Professor at the Stephan Ludwig Roth High School in Medias, Oberth created there most of his scientific work to the construction and flying of rockets in space. King Carol II gave him permission to do experiments at the Aviation School in the city, and during 1932-1935 Oberth will build numerous experimental model rocket, a few of which were even launched.

Since 1950, Hermann Oberth worked at Spezia, Italy, where he built an ammonium nitrate rocket and then left for America in 1955, where he worked under the supervision of Wernher von Braun in the U.S. space program. He returned to Germany, then he was a temporary consultant in America, and in 1962 he moved at his Feucht home.

By the end of his life he received numerous honors and recognitions for his work, for which institutes or astronautics awards carrying his name had been established, and he was decorated and welcomed in many prestigious institutions. Currently, 90 solutions are assigned to Hermann Oberth, which were later used in the worldwide construction of rockets, and more than 300 formulas, Physics and Mathematics relationships and conceptual ideas of his were then subsequently translated into practice.

Unfortunately, the scientist is known more internationally and too little in Romania, especially in the small world of astronautics. In the Technology Museum in Vienna, for example, Oberth's presence is prominent, but it says nothing about Romania, about his origin, about the place where his scientific work was created or where he received his professor license for the aforementioned work, later published as a book in Germany.